By Jackie Blurton
Di Massey receives grant from GCAG Board member Jackie Blurton
Leslie Crumbley receives grant from GCAG board member Tom Vaughan
This fall the Grant County Art Guild invited art teachers to apply for two $250 "Art Makes You Smart" grants. The grants are intended to aid teachers in the purchase of art supplies for their class rooms. Di Massey from Cliff Schools and Leslie Crumbley from Cobre Consolidated Schools were selected as this year's grant recipients.
When Di Massey began teaching literature at Cliff Schools three years ago the administration was delighted to learn she also had an art education certificate. The school lacked an arts program for the high school students and she stepped in to fill the gap. In her second year, she began an arts program for the elementary students.
This year she took a big step and created the "Big Buddy/Little Buddy" art program. In the program two high school students were paired with four kindergarten and first-grade students to collaborate on an art project. Di drew upon the subject of her older students' literature class as the inspiration for the combined project of writing, illustrating and binding books by hand.
Her older students were studying Beowulf and they used the classic epic poem's themes of honor, loyalty and bravery to develop their own stories. They composed their stories on computers with space left for illustrations. In a combined art class the high school students worked with the younger students to draw illustrations for the older students' stories. Together the Big Buddies and Little Buddies hand bound the books which are now available at the classroom library for all the students to check out and read.
The art project integrated visual arts, language arts and technology to create a finished product that all the students could take pride in. Di's program has also fostered community building, interaction, mentoring and friendships between the younger and older students.
The second grant recipient is Leslie Crumbley from the Cobre Consolidated Schools. She has approximately 700 students she sees each week. Art education is an important tool for expanding her students' curiosity, creativity, self-expression, organizational skills and world view.
"Art connects to math, language arts, science, and history. It helps our students connect with the different cultures of the world and how they express their ideas. It offers a place for them to express their own ideas and feelings. Art education uses all these elements to help nurture these skills needed for our children to understand and to be successful in the work place and our world," says Leslie.
Her students gain organizational skills that enable them to finish projects, take care of materials, share the use of their space and keep it clean. They collaborate on projects where they can brainstorm with other students, and become flexible and creative in their solutions and use of art materials.
She sees art as a vital component in a child's education. In a time when art classes are often cut along with school budgets, art in schools is in even more need of support. It not only develops a child's mind but gives children a chance to find their own solutions to problems, to think outside the box. The solutions they find are neither right nor wrong but are their personal, creative solutions to a task.
The members of the Grant County Art Guild congratulate Di Massey and Leslie Crumbley and wish them and their students much success in the coming school year.
The Grant County Art Guild operates the Pinos Altos Gallery located in the Historic Hearst Church in Pinos Altos. The gallery is open from May through mid-October. The Guild also shows year-around at Vickie's Eatery and HMS. For information about the Guild, events and membership go to www.gcag.org.